It's been a while since
archaeologists have had the chance to expand our collective
imagination. Every once in a while a discovery is made - from
lost cities to the Dead Sea Scrolls - that causes us to sit up
and scratch our chins. Many of the discoveries about dinosaurs
have done just that: Imagine a world in which lumbering giants
fought for supremacy.
Well, that imagined world of dino-might is about to get a
whole lot bigger.
Sunday evening, the History Channel presents a two-hour
special dubbed "Predator X," a program that travels
to the arctic in a bid to bring us face to face with the
largest dinosaur who ever lived. And we're talking really big
- a new species of dinosaur with a head that was twice the
size of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
"Predator X" chronicles the work of scientists to
extricate the fossils of Predator X, their slow realization of
the size and power of this long-lost predator and their
attempt to preserve their discovery for the world. The action
centers around a remote archipelago of Svalbard, which is
located only 800 miles from the North Pole.
It's there that a team of paleontologists from the
University of Oslo Natural History Museum have dug beneath the
ice and found the fossilized remains of a creature that will
come to be dubbed Predator X. It's a remarkable underwater
discovery - some have hailed it one of the biggest underwater
finds ever - and after digging up the remains, the team tries
to rebuild the skeleton, assessing the scope of this new
discovery.
Naturally, the special does its best to put this creature
into context, awakening in us the terror and majesty of any
creature that would have existed on this scale. But what I was
most impressed by was the show's careful attention to the
scientific details.
This is a show not only about a fantastical monster, but
also the meticulous and methodical scientific process that
goes into field research, removal, reconstruction and
assessment. While we'd like to think that all archaeology work
is like Indiana Jones, grabbing golden idols and running
through caves, it's often far more precise and precarious than
that.
"Predator X" connected with my inner science
geek. There once was a time where I was young enough to
believe that anything was possible; that there were still
plenty of corners of this world that had been unexplored,
plenty of facts that had yet to be learned. As we grow older,
we start to think we've seen it all, that there's little left
to surprise us. For all those people, there's "Predator
X," a show that once again piques our imagination and
makes the impossible seem almost probable.
E-mail: SnyderReviews@hotmail.com
